Tesco decides to close last remaining part of its digital empire after failing
to find a buyer

Struggling supermarket chain Tesco has given up on Blinkbox Books after failing to find a buyer for the division.

The decision by the grocery giant puts 60 jobs at the book division under threat.

Highstreet retailer Waterstones, which runs a chain of 290 books stores, had been in exclusive talks to buy the business as a way of reacting to customer demand for digital reading and ebook sales.

A Tesco spokesperson said: “We have taken the decision to close our eBook service blinkbox Books.

“We’ve learnt a lot since launching the service and whilst we saw encouraging levels of take up, we believe that we can do more for our customers by focusing on our core business. The service will close by the end of February.”

Tesco created Blinkbox Books after acquiring Mobcast, a digital book service, for £4.5m in September 2012.

Blinkbox Books posted a pre-tax loss of £2m on sales of just £70,000, according to the last available accounts for the year to Feruary 2013.

Separately, Tesco announced on Monday that Australian music streaming business Guvera has bought Blinkbox Music for £5m, less than half the £12m Tesco paid for the business in 2012 when it was then called We7.

Guvera operates online music streaming platforms across Asia, India and the Middle East and now has plans to expand across Europe. The digital music service claims to have 2.5m registered app users and 100 million streams

Since buying Blinkbox from its venture capital backers in 2011 Tesco has invested heavily in marketing and flashy officesin a bid to take on Netflix, Amazon, Lovefilm and BSkyB. However, its digital empire failed to take off.